Ummah (/ˈʊmə/;[1] Arabic: أُمَّة [ˈʊm.mæ]) is an Arabic word meaning Muslim identity, nation, religious community, or the concept of a Commonwealth of the Muslim Believers (أمة المؤمنين ummat al-muʼminīn).[2] It is a synonym for ummat al-Islām (أمّةْ الإِسْلَامُ, lit. ‘the Islamic nation’); it is commonly used to mean the collective community of Muslim people.[3] In the Quran, the ummah typically refers to a single group that shares common religious beliefs, specifically those that are the objects of a divine plan of salvation.[4][5] The word ummah (pl. umam [ˈʊmæm]) means nation in Arabic. For example, the Arabic term for the United Nations is الأمم المتحدة al-Umam al-Muttaḥidah, and the term الأمة العربية al-Ummah al-ʻArabiyyah is used to refer to “the Arab Nation”.[6]
Ummah is distinguished from shaʻb (شَعْب [ˈʃæʕb], “people”), which means a nation with common ancestry or geography. The word ummah differs from the concept of a country or people. In its greater context it is used to describe a larger group of people. For example, in Arabic the word شعب shaʻab (“people”) would be used to describe the citizens of Syria. However, the term ummah is used to describe the Arab people as a whole, which includes Syrians as well as the people of the Arab world. Ummah can be a supra-national polity with a common history and identity based on religion. Pan-Islamism advocates for the unity of Muslims in one nation as an Islamic country or an Islamic state.[2]
Islamic usage and origin
Further information: Enjoining good and forbidding wrong and Ma’ruf
The phrase Ummah Wāhidah in the Quran (أمة واحدة, “One Nation”) refers to all the Islamic world as it existed at the time. The Quran says: “You [Muslims] are the best nation brought out for Mankind, commanding what is righteous (معروف Ma’rūf, lit. “recognized [as good]”) and forbidding what is wrong (منكر Munkar, lit. “recognized [as evil]”)” [3:110]. The usage is further clarified by the Constitution of Medina, an early document said to have been negotiated by Muhammad in CE 622 with the leading clans of Medina, which explicitly refers to Jews, Christians and pagan citizens of Medina as members of the Ummah.[7][8][9][10]
Emergence
Main articles: Muslim world and Caliphate
At the time of Muhammad, before the conception of the ummah, Arab communities were typically governed by kinship.[11] In other words, the political ideology of the Arabs centred on tribal affiliations and blood relations.[11] In the midst of a tribal society, the religion of Islam emerged and along with it the concept of the ummah. The ummah emerged according to the idea that a messenger or prophet has been sent to a nation.[4] Unlike earlier messengers, who had been sent to various nations in the past (as can be found among the Prophets in the Old Testament), Muhammad sought to develop an ummah that was universal and not only for Arabs.[4] Muhammad saw his purpose as the transmission of a divine message and the leadership of the Islamic nation.[4] Islam sees Muhammad as the messenger to the ummah, transmitting a divine message, and implying that God is directing the life affairs of the ummah.[11] Accordingly, the purpose of the ummah was to be based on religion by following the commands of God, rather than kinship.[11]
Immediately after Muhammad’s death in 632, caliphates were established and the Shia emerged.[12] Caliphates were Islamic states under the leadership of a political successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad.[13] These polities developed into multi-ethnic trans-national empires.[14]
Qur’an
There are 62 instances in which the term ummah is mentioned in the Qur’an,[15] and they almost always refer to ethical, linguistic, or religious bodies of people who are subject to the divine plan of salvation.[4][16] The meaning of the term appears to transform throughout the chronology of the Qur’an.[15] When it is first used in the Qur’an, it is hardly distinguishable from the term qawm, which can be translated to ‘people’.[17] The Qur’an recognizes that each ummah has a messenger that has been sent to relay a divine message to the nation and that all ummahs await God’s ultimate judgment.[11][16] Although the meaning of the ummah begins simply with a general application of the word, it gradually develops in reference to a general religious community and then evolves to specifically refer to the Muslim nation.[15]
Before it referred exclusively to Muslims, the ummah encompassed Jewish and Christian communities as one with the Muslims and referred to them as the People of the Book.[11][16] That is supplemented by the Constitution of Medina which declares all members of the ummah, regardless of religion, to be of “one ummah“.[11] In those passages of the Qur’an, ummah may be referring to a unity of mankind through the shared beliefs of the monotheistic religions.[15] Frederick Mathewson Denny argues that the most recent ummah that receives a messenger from God is the Arab ummah.[16] As the Muslims became stronger during their residence in Medina, the Arab ummah narrowed into an ummah exclusively for Muslims.[16] That is evidenced by the resacralisation of the Kaaba and Muhammad’s command to take a pilgrimage to Mecca, along with the redirection of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca.[16]
The period in which the term is used most often is within the Third Meccan Period, followed by the Medinian Period.[16] The extensive use of the term during both time periods indicates that Muhammad had begun to arrive at the concept of the ummah to specify the genuine Muslim nation.[16] Furthermore, the early Meccan passages generally equate ummah as religion, but in the Medinan passages refer more specifically to the relations of ummah and religion.[16] The final passage that refers to ummah in the Qur’an refers to the Muslims as the “best nation” and accordingly led to it being as an exclusive reference to Islam.[16] A verse in the Qur’an also mentions the ummah in the context of all of the messengers,[18] and that their ummah (nation) of theirs is one, and God is their Lord entirely:
O messengers, eat from the good foods and work righteousness. Indeed, I, of what you do, am Knowing. And indeed this, your ummah (nation), is one ummah (nation), and I am your Lord, so fear Me. [Qur’an, Surah Al-Mu’minun (The Believers) (23:51–52)]
Mecca
Initially, it did not appear that the new Muslim nation would oppose the tribes that already existed in Mecca.[19] The first Muslims did not need to make a break with traditional Quraysh customs since the vision for the new nation included moral norms that were not unfamiliar to the tribal society of Mecca.[19] However, what distinguished this community from the tribes was its focus of the place of those morals within a person’s life.[19]
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